122 071 the Silver, Gold, and Platina, of Russia. 



versts from the usual deposits of platina, in a bed of red clay, 

 where some slaves were employed in making bricks. Those 

 streams, in the beds and on the banks of which, the gold deposits 

 are met with, contain more gold, and less platina on the Euro- 

 pean, than those on the Asiatic side of the Ural mountains. The 

 amount of gold obtained from these washings, had amounted for 

 the year 1830, to nearly half a million sterling. 



" It may be well imagined to what an extent their operations 

 must be extended, when the hundred pouds or four thousand 

 pounds weight of soil, seldom yields above sixty-five grains of gold, 

 and varies from sixty-five to one hundred and twenty grains, — 

 which is there considered rich, — to the hundred pouds. Never- 

 theless, their mining operations are conducted with such skill 

 and success, as even to obtain of this limited quantity nearly 

 the whole amount ; and that too, with such little cost, as to have 

 been indeed far beneath my expectation. 



" Of the simple, and yet beautiful processes made use of in the 

 gold washings of the Ural mountains, I shall hereafter speak, well 

 convinced of the great utility and service which they would be 

 of, if made known to the mining regions of other countries. 



" The Demidoffs, DavidofFs, and many other Russian families, 

 are acquiring princely revenues from the employment of their 

 slaves in these gold washings ; but it is not alone the gold, the 

 platina itself is another great source of their prosperity ; more 

 especially since ail the platina is now coined at the imperial 

 mint, and established as part of the current coin of the realm. 



" The coins made of platina are beautiful ; those large pieces 

 with the head of the emperor are the best, and show better the 

 effect and polish which coins of this metal can take. Though 

 many hundred pounds weight of platina are coined monthly, into 

 pieces of eleven and twenty-two rubles, they disappear rapidly 

 from the circulation. They may be met with occasionally, and a 

 few at a time, in the hands of the brokers. I consider their price 

 much abov^e the London price of malleable platina, which is at 

 present about twenty-five shiUings English per ounce : consider- 

 ing that the crude platina is the produce of the country, the Rus- 

 sian price for malleable platina, which is about twenty-eight 

 shillings, is too extravagant ; and yet this does not arise from the 

 expense of manufactiiring, but from the cost of the material itself, 

 which is far higher than the platina of South America. The 



